Wellfleet residents lend a hand in Haiti

Local residents are pitching in for the effort to help those living in the earthquake-devastated island nation of Haiti.

Reva Blau

Local residents are pitching in for the effort to help those living in the earthquake-devastated island nation of Haiti.

Ellen LeBow and Seth Rolbein of Wellfleet headed to Haiti on Tuesday with a group that includes professors of urban planning from Boston and Harvard universities.

The group’s mission? To envision how the city of Port-au-Prince might be rebuilt once reconstruction of the city is underway.

Port-au-Prince is a mere 10 miles south from the epicenter of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake last Tuesday. The capital is still reeling from the disaster that flattened the city and whose death toll is estimated to be between 50,000 and 100,000, with some estimates as high as 200,000.

Former President Bill Clinton has said that the death toll is the highest in a single day since the creation of the United Nations. Clinton, as special envoy to the United Nations, will be involved in the international efforts to rebuild the city, as well as distributing international aid for food, fresh water and shelter.

LeBow, along with Nauset teacher and musician Lisa Brown, has been visiting and helping in Haiti for 12 years. LeBow and Brown forged a relationship between Wellfleet and Matènwa, a small village on the island of Lagonav. After joining a friend from Cambridge, Chris Low, who co-founded the Community School of Matènwa, LeBow and Brown founded The Starfish Arts & Vocational Center, which supports the school through environmental projects, music and artisanship.

Since Brown’s first visit, Nauset students also have been involved in raising money for the schools as well as visiting and working there, and they’ve welcomed teachers from Matènwa to participate in their own classrooms.

LeBow also began a women’s artist collective to provide a source of income to the women of the community. Last year, she opened a store, Ra Ra, in Wellfleet, which sells hand-painted scarves and crafts made by the artisans of Matènwa.

Rolbein, former editor and publisher of the Cape Cod Voice who is also LeBow’s life partner, currently works as an editor of the Boston University Web site BU Today. Several professors and city planners from Boston University were invited, according to LeBow, by Haiti’s minister of the interior to start looking at what happened and how the world can help Haiti rebuild a functional infrastructure.

Rolbein will be documenting the efforts for Boston University. LeBow will assist, as well as making initial contacts with her beloved village. Since it is on an island, Matenwa is virtually cut off from supplies of food, water and medicine.

“Everyone is living in fear,” said Sky Freyss-Cole, who has been involved in The Haiti Project since going there as a student from Nauset. “They cannot get the food they need because the market women normally go to is on the mainland. Even living under tin roofs, they are scared to sleep in their houses.”

Last Saturday, Cape Codders expressed an outpouring of support for Haiti by supporting The Haiti Project. The annual fundraiser, Merci d’Avance Dance, planned in advance of the earthquake, raised more than $25,000 for The Haiti Project. At press time, the donations, according to Freyss-Cole, were still coming in. LeBow said that part of the proceeds would go towards emergency earthquake relief, while the bulk of the funds will sustain the project. In her speech at the fundraiser, LeBow referred to the project as providing the economic stability that would prevent people from migrating to Port-au-Prince slums, the same slums whose lack of adequate building gave the disaster its epic proportions.

LeBow will be meeting with and helping to fund the life-saving efforts of Jean Magloire, deeply involved in health and human rights in Haiti. His organization is centered in Carrefour, the actual epicenter of the quake, which has seen no aid because the roads have been impassable.

More than 500 people came out to attend the Merci D’Avance Dance and give generously to sustain The Haiti Project despite the enormous setbacks that the earthquake caused — aftershocks that will be felt for months and years ahead.

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